growth? How can we improve quality of life in third world countries? What would curb the childhood ob
oil spills affect ecosystems and natural renewable resources? How can we have a sustainable energy fu
Research, scholarship and creative activity at Oklahoma State University

2013

hat caused the extinction of the dinosaurs? Can renewable energies provide all the power we need? what
ustomer service impact consumer buying decisions? What causes abnormal fat storage that leads to obesit
brain development? Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the best way to store renewable energy once we produce it? What new comput
world? How can crops survive historic droughts? What does medieval art tell us about ancient cultures?
re stem cells the answer to preventing human diseases? How does maternal nutrition impact infant brain
destrian and vehicular safety?
Can we engineer more dis
n we make fuel less corrosive?
Are there better ways to
certain animals sniff out bombs?
What causes heart disease?
hing?
What new building materia
ar?
Do certain foods preven
te?
Can osteoporosis be rev
be?
What are the best cataly
er?
How do oil spills affect e
sun?
How did religion spread ac
evelopment cause climate change?
What causes genes to muta
What could keep cattle healthier?
Did urban development cau
re predictors for economic failure?
Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the best way to st
an we make plants pest resistant?
when
How can we improve gene therapy?
Are t
d our current economic recession?
is it
have a sustainable energy future?
wh
t tell us about ancient cultures?
ho
What are the best catalysts for economic growth? Are there better ways to predict natural disasters?
What new computer programs could benefit business forecasters? How can we improve cancer treatment?
uld curb the childhood obesity epidemic? Could new traffic control devices enhance pedestrian and vehic
for cancer? Can osteoporosis be reversed? Do certain foods prevent disease? Can certain animals sniff ou
nable energy future? How can we make our country safer and more secure? What caused the extinction o
Could new tr
es to mutate? How does STEM education prepare our children for success?
How can we
there better ways to detect and monitor dangerous corrosion on bridges?
are there
What causes abnormal fat storage that leads to obesity and diabetes?
d? Are there better ways to protect ourselves from identity theft?
What caused
untries? What new building materials would make structures sounder?
Are stem cells
ads to obesity and diabetes? Are there predictors for economic failure?
How can crops s
less corrosive? Can we engineer more disease-resistant plants? Are there biomarkers in our genes for
safety? Can we produce ethanol from something other than corn? Does customer service impact consume
we prevent premature deterioration of highways, runways, parking lots and bridges? How can we improve q

Burns Hargis, President
Stephen W.S. McKeever, Vice President
for Research and Technology Transfer
Vanguard is published annually by
Oklahoma State University. It is produced
by the Office of Vice President for Research
and Technology Transfer.

Greetings friends
and colleagues,
Merriam-Webster’s online
dictionary defines “solution”
as 1) the action or process of
solving a problem and as 2) an

answer to a problem. If you
couldn’t tell by the cover of this
magazine, there are a lot of
questions still unanswered in
our society: How are we going
to meet future energy demands?
How early can we detect cancer?
Can we engineer crops capable
of surviving historic droughts?
How can our economy be more competitive? Are there better ways to predict
natural disasters? How can we make our country safer and more secure? And
these are only the tip of the iceberg!
The needs and issues of our society are great, but here at OSU our
passion to solve them is greater.
Our faculty and student researchers are motivated by questions that still
have no answer. They dedicate themselves to the process of finding solutions.
It’s central to who they are as scientists, humanitarians, community leaders,
doctors, engineers and citizens, and it reflects the value and tradition of
OSU’s land-grant mission.
I hope as you read the stories in this issue of Vanguard you catch a
glimpse of that process and of the all the problems we are tackling as a
university. There will always be more questions to answer, but that’s OK.
That’s what research is all about.

Oklahoma State University, in compliance with Title VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
Executive Order 11246 as amended, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, Americans
with Disabilities Act of 1990, and other federal laws and regulations, does not discriminate on
the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, age, religion, disability, or status as a veteran in
any of its policies, practices or procedures. This includes but is not limited to admissions, employment, financial aid, and educational services. Title IX of the Education Amendments and
Oklahoma State University policy prohibit discrimination in the provision of services or benefits offered by the University based on gender. Any person (student, faculty or staff) who
believes that discriminatory practices have been engaged in based upon gender may discuss
their concerns and file informal or formal complaints of possible violations of Title IX with the
OSU Director of Affirmative Action, 408 Whitehurst, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK
74078, (405)744-5371 or (405) 744-5576 (fax). This publication, issued by Oklahoma State
University as authorized by the Vice President for Research and Technology Transfer, was
printed by Southwestern Stationery and Bank Supply at a cost of $5,180. (5M) 12/12. #4467

Sincerely,

You’ve got questions?
We’ve got research.
Scan this code for a video on how OSU
research is answering questions, solving
problems and meeting needs.
The video is also available at

ostate.tv/topics/research.

Research at Oklahoma State University • www.research.okstate.edu

Research, scholarship and creative activity at Oklahoma State University
2013

TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S
2 Q&A: Promise in the Skies
4 The Learning World of Tomorrow
Researchers in the College of Engineering, Architecture & Technology are
using virtual reality environments to help children with autism learn science.

4

6 The Power of a Protein

Polycystic kidney disease, a common, life-threatening genetic disease,
is the focus of research at the Center for Veterinary Health Sciences.

10 Carwash for Meat
13 The Power of PR
16 A Model for Student Growth

18

18 Native American Health and Well-being
20 Balancing Act

Executive pay is a big, big deal. Not just because it’s serious money,
but because of how it affects who receives it. Ali Nejadmalayeri,
an OSU assistant finance professor, had his study on executive compensation
published in the Journal of Corporate Finance.

22 Protecting the Troops

OSU-Tulsa associate professor Jay Hanan is leading research to create
a stronger, lighter body armor that could be used in combat.

24

24 A Smart Garment for a Healthy Future

An interdisciplinary team at OSU’s Center for Health Sciences has created
a garment that could revolutionize the treatment of cardiovascular and
respiratory diseases and disorders.

Promise in
the Skies
Unmanned aerial systems
are a hot topic right now at
OSU and throughout the state.
Dave Wagie, the director
of aerospace and defense
economic development at the
Oklahoma Department of
Commerce, sheds light on why
this burgeoning industry should
have a home in Oklahoma.
About two years ago, the state of
Oklahoma, including Gov. Mary
Fallin, seemed to rally around
unmanned aerial systems as an
economic driver for the future
of our state. Why is supporting
and developing the UAS industry
such a win for Oklahoma?
The UAS industry is the major
future expansion area in aerospace, and
Oklahoma is perfectly suited to be an
international leader in this area. First,
Oklahoma has always been an “aerospace state.” Clyde Cessna flew his first
airplane in Oklahoma in 1913, and
Wiley Post set a round-the-world solo
flight record in 1933. Today, aerospace
is 10 percent of the Oklahoma economy:
500 companies, 150,000 workers, $5
billion in payroll, and $12.5 billion of

2

Research at Oklahoma State University • www.research.okstate.edu

PHOTO PROVIDED

annual output. We have a huge aerospace focus in the state – from military (with Tinker, Vance and Altus Air
Force bases), to the 500-plus aerospace companies in the state, to the
largest military maintenance depot
(Tinker AFB) in the U.S., and the largest
civilian depot in the world (American
Airlines). In addition, we have the FAA
Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center,
the largest FAA training location in
the U.S. outside of Washington, D.C..
The UAS industry will be exploding
in the next few years. The world
market in UAS is $5.9 billion this year,
growing to $15.1 billion by 2022. The
U.S. Department of Defense spent $3.9
billion on UAS in 2011 and will spend
$5.5 billion by 2025. There are 1,300
different UAVs currently being tested
or manufactured worldwide. Estimates

are that 50,000 new jobs will be created
by 2015 in UAS – and Oklahoma plans
to be a major part of this growth.
Many countries already use
UAS, and the U.S. will soon be using
them nationwide after the FAA starts
opening up national airspace to UAS
in 2015. We believe the UAS industry
will explode in the U.S. after 2015
for first responders, fire, police; agriculture, ranching; inspecting rail
lines, oil and gas lines and stacks,
wind turbines, environmental areas;
communication; security, etc.
In what ways is Oklahoma set apart
to be a worldwide leader in UAS?
Oklahoma is becoming a world
leader in UAS and a strong competitor
for one of the six national test ranges

the FAA will be selecting in the coming
months – both because of our aerospace
industry in the state and because we
are already researching, developing and
testing all areas of the UAS industry: the
vehicles (planes), the payloads/sensors
(cameras, IR, weather radar, etc.), the
communication/avionics/electronics/
navigation equipment, the ground
station equipment, the testing resources
and equipment (flight and ground), and
training and education for UAS engineers, pilots, payload operators, maintenance personnel, etc. We have 14
companies in the state that are already
specifically focused on the UAS industry.
We are also set apart for two
other major UAS resources. First,
through OSU’s University Multispectral Laboratories, we have our UAS
flight test facility in Lawton, where
we have been flying and testing UAVs
and their payloads and sensors for
two years, under a unique agreement with Fort Sill to use a section of
its military restricted airspace exclusively for UAS flight testing. Second, at
OSU, we have the first UAS graduate
program in the nation, contributing to
research and development on UAVs.
Finally, we are set apart because we
are taking a statewide approach to developing the UAS industry in Oklahoma.
In August 2011, Gov. Fallin created the
Oklahoma UAS Advisory Council to help
develop the UAS industry. This council
is chaired by Stephen McKeever, the VP
for Research at OSU, and has members
from OSU, OU, state agencies and
private companies. Having a statewide
approach means Oklahoma can bring
all our resources – public and private
– to bear to effectively grow our UAS
industry and be competitive to attract
companies and federal agencies to test,
invest and grow here in the future.
In what ways do the educational and research capabilities available at OSU support
the statewide UAS initiative?
OSU is a critical part of the growth
of the UAS industry in Oklahoma. In the
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
School, students have been designing
and building UAVs for years, flying

them under radio-controlled aircraft
rules. Now the department has added
the first graduate option in UAS in the
country, enrolling the first 20 graduate students in January 2012. These
graduate students and their faculty will
be researching, developing and testing
new UAV aircraft that will support the
UAS industry in the state and make
us even more competitive for selection
as an FAA national UAS test range.
Oklahoma was recently selected
by the Department of Homeland
Security as a test site for the DHS
Robotic Aircraft for Public Safety
(RAPS) Program. What does this
selection mean for the state?
This was a huge plus for Oklahoma
and our UAS industry. Being selected
by a federal agency to test UAVs and
be its single test location in the entire
nation is an indication of the capability
and expertise Oklahoma has in the
UAS industry. It has garnered Oklahoma great publicity – as indicated by
the number of other states that came
by the Oklahoma booth at the North
American Association for Unmanned
Vehicle Systems International conference in Las Vegas in August 2012 to
see how we are being so successful in
the UAS industry and why we were
selected by DHS as its test site.
As you alluded to, the state is
moving forward with a proposal to
the Federal Aviation Administration
to become an FAA-approved test
range for UAS. What is this program
and why is it important? Will there
be an impact for OSU, if selected?
The FAA has been mandated by
Congress to integrate UAS into the
national airspace by 2015. As part of that
mandate, it is required to select six UAS
test ranges nationally this year to test
and validate UAS vehicles, flight regulations, and safety procedures (senseand-avoid technology, lost link procedures, etc.). The FAA is also required to
consult with the Department of Defense,
Department of Homeland Security
and NASA as part of this process. This
selection is important because the six
test ranges will be the focus for federal

agencies and private companies to
develop vehicles, sensors, payloads, etc.,
in preparation for the rapid expansion
of the industry across the U.S. after
2015. If companies come to Oklahoma
to research, test and develop UAS on our
test range, they will also be more likely
to locate here for future research, development and manufacturing – bringing
high-tech jobs and growth to Oklahoma.
There is an important role for OSU
and other research universities in the
state if selected. Federal agencies and
private companies that come to Oklahoma to test vehicles and systems at
our test range will also be looking for
research partners to help them develop
and improve their vehicles, systems
and technology. We have already seen
how major companies select expansion locations based on the potential
university research collaboration that
will help them develop new technology
and products for their company. As an
example, ASCO, a Belgian aerospace
company, recently selected Stillwater
as a North American expansion location, both because of our state’s expertise and support to aerospace companies,
but also because of the research support
and partnering that OSU could provide
to them. While ASCO is not specifically a UAS company, it is an example
of how aerospace growth is dependent
on research university support, and in
the future, aerospace growth will be
strongly focused on the UAS industry.

Dave Wagie supports the state’s
aerospace and defense economic
development strategy by connecting universities, government
and industry to expand existing
Oklahoma businesses, attract
new businesses to the state and
support enterprise creation in
aerospace and defense. In addition, he serves on Gov. Mary
Fallin’s Unmanned Aerial Systems
Advisory Council.

Research at Oklahoma State University • www.research.okstate.edu

3

A

young child grabs the
controls of what looks like
a video game controller to
interact intently with the 3-D solar
system on the large screen before
her. She is having fun playing in
the high-definition virtual reality
environment. And she’s a part
of a quiet revolution involving
the future of learning, and Oklahoma State University faculty
members are at the forefront of it.
The child at play has
autism, and this learning experience is part of a pilot initiative aimed at helping children
with autism learn science.
J. Cecil, associate professor
in the School of Industrial Engineering at OSU, heads up this
research with engineering and
education faculty and students.
“We are in the preliminary stages of this exciting
research,” says Cecil. “Our group
is interested in exploring how
advanced engineering technologies can be used to help
children with special needs.”
An estimated one in 88 children has an autism spectrum
disorder in the U.S, according to
the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention, and the number is
growing. A 2012 report from the
CDC noted a 23 percent increase
since 2009 in autism diagnoses
among 8-year-olds in the U.S., but
noted that at least some of that
increase is due to the way children are identified, diagnosed and
served in their communities today.

Symptoms of an autism spectrum disorder, including a lack
of social interaction, delayed
communication and limited activities and interests, usually appear
by the time a child is 3 years old.
“Collectively, we are not only
creating virtual learning environments but also studying impact
of these VLEs on learning
and engagement,”
says Cecil. “We
live in a
cyber-

intensive world, and children are
comfortable using video games
and iPads. In a VLE, a child can
explore and satisfy their natural
curiosity. Unlike a traditional
classroom, they can repeat an
interactive experience or go back
and inquire more about a certain
part of their learning module.”

The

Learning World
of Tomorrow
PHOTO / GARY LAWSON

4

Research at Oklahoma State University • www.research.okstate.edu

With funding from the Office
of the Provost at OSU, the research
team is collaborating with Mary
Sweet-Darter of the University of Central Oklahoma. As a
member of the Oklahoma Autism
Task Force, Sweet-Darter has
been instrumental in creating
a network of services for families with children diagnosed with
an autism spectrum disorder.
Damon Chandler, associate
professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
and Mwarumba Mwavita of OSU’s
College of Education have been

working closely with Cecil on
this groundbreaking research.
“A graphics-intensive virtual
communication medium has
the potential to engage and
encourage children to learn
through exploration,” says Chandler. “Once a child is immersed
in a virtual reality environment,
very few of them want to leave
it and do something else.”
VLE-based techniques have
been used successfully for the
general population at both the
K-12 level and at the undergraduate and graduate levels in
engineering courses, Cecil says.
In fact, OSU’s College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology is pioneering an innovative approach where students can
learn by immersing themselves
in 3-D learning environments.

Although the study is
still in early stages, this OSU
research group hopes its findings can be used in developing
school curriculum and community opportunities that stimulate children with these needs.
Cecil says his research group
is continuing to look for additional partners. His group plans
to create an Oklahoma Educational Initiative with more
emphasis on helping those with
autism learn science and math.
“This research is just the
beginning in helping shed light
on this area,” says Cecil. “Our
group is interdisciplinary in its
outlook and this enables us to
provide a unique perspective on
both technology and learning.”
Chandler indicates that the
group’s findings will not only

“Once a child is immersed in
a virtual reality environment,
very few of them want to leave
it and do something else.”
— Damon Chandler
“We chose to study this area
of research because we wanted
our engineering research to have a
more direct impact on helping children learn,” says Cecil. “The longterm outcome will hopefully be to
enable those with autism to function at high levels independently.”
“In this pilot project, we will
design virtual environments for
autistic children and study its
impact on their learning of basic
science and math concepts,”
says Cecil. “We will be working
with around 20 children under
the age of 10, one-on-one for a
few years to generate the data
we need to establish results.”

affect children with autism, but
they could also help identify
new ways to encourage science
and engineering learning in
K-12 and higher education.
Cecil says designing new
educational technologies is vital
to keeping all children interested
in science and engineering, as
well as opening doors to students
who might otherwise not consider
careers in science, technology,
engineering and mathematics.
The research takes place
through the Center for Information Centric Engineering. For more
information on research at CICE,
visit www.okstate.edu/cinbm.
Wravenna Bloomberg

Research at Oklahoma State University • www.research.okstate.edu

5

Mandy Darr, at left with her cousin,
and Nikki Smith, below with her
husband and three sons, recognize
the importance of family. Both
are sufferers of Polycystic
Kidney Disease, a common lifethreatening genetic disease that
currently has no cure. Both stand
to benefit from research led by
Dr. Myron Hinsdale at the
Oklahoma State University Center
for Veterinary Health Sciences.

PHOTOS PROVIDED

6

Research at Oklahoma State University â&#x20AC;˘ www.research.okstate.edu

The PO

T

hirty-year-old Mandy Darr received a
kidney transplant last year.
“After I was born it was discovered
I had gotten Polycystic Kidney Disease
(PKD) from my mom,” Darr said.
Her kidneys were three times the
size they should have been and doctors
thought she was not going to make it. Her
family was told she would need a transplant by the time she was a teenager.

However, Darr’s sister has not had any
adverse effects from the disease.
Nikki Smith has also has a family
history of PKD. She lost her father when
he was 44 and her grandfather when he
was in his 30s.
“I am 28 years old and have known
since I was 16 that I have PKD,” Smith
said. “Two out of three of my little boys
also have PKD.”

OWER of a
PROTEIN
“I did not slip into renal failure until
I was around 24 or 25,” Darr said. “When
I got all of my tests done, I was on the list
for about a year and a half.”
Darr’s donor was her dad’s best
friend who originally offered his kidney
to her mother. Mandy Darr has a long
family history of PKD and her younger
sister (and only sibling) has it as well.

Smith’s only brother and her aunt
also have PKD.
PKD is one of the most common
life-threatening genetic diseases,
affecting an estimated 12.5 million
people worldwide. PKD is more common
than cystic fibrosis and multiple sclerosis. One in 500 to one in 1,000 people
are affected by PKD.
story continues >

Research at Oklahoma State University • www.research.okstate.edu

7

Dr. Myron Hinsdale (center)
currently has five members
on his research team. They
are (from left) graduate
student Nabin Poudel, DVM;
research technician Huan
Song, master’s in molecular
and cellular biology; research
associate Maria Cristina
Munteanu, Ph.D. in biology;
graduate student Girija Regme,
DVM; and postdoctoral fellow
Sivasami Pulavendran, Ph.D.
in cell biology.

“PKD affects people at any age,”
said Dr. Myron Hinsdale, an assistant
professor in the Department of Physiological Sciences at the Oklahoma State
University Center for Veterinary Health
Sciences. “You never know who might
have the disease. It can start during the
prenatal stages of development or it will
occur during old age.”
The genetic disorder results in
cystic development in multiple organs

8

Research at Oklahoma State University • www.research.okstate.edu

but always affects the kidneys. There are
two types of PKD: autosomal dominant
polycystic kidney disease and the less
common autosomal recessive polycystic
kidney disease. It arises from mutations
in three different genes. Both humans
and animals can be affected.
There is a wide range of severity and
disease progression, suggesting that other
genes within a person’s DNA can modify
the course of the disease. For example,
even members of the same family who
share the same mutation(s) can differ in
disease severity. The fluid-filled cysts are
numerous and compress and damage

normal tissue in the kidneys. The disease
can also damage the liver, pancreas and,
in rare cases, the heart and brain.
The focus for Hinsdale’s research is
on proteins located at the cell interface or
the area around the cells, called the extracellular matrix. He believes these proteins
are important modifiers of the disease
severity. At OSU, he studies how cells
behave with respect to injury or aging
and he collaborates with the Nephrology
Department at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in Oklahoma City and investigators at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation.

PHOTO / GARY LAWSON

Animal models are indispensable to the study of PKD. The most
common way to study a disease like
PKD in animal models is to use embryonic stem cells. Embryonic stem cells
are derived from the inner cell mass of
the blastocyst, an early-stage embryo.
Pluripotent stem cells are often termed
“true” stem cells because they have the
potential to differentiate into almost
any cell in the body. This means that
under the right circumstances, a stem
cell that is isolated from an embryo
can produce any cell in the body.

For the research being conducted,
the researcher takes mouse embryonic
stem cells that contain the mutation they
are interested in and inject them into
early mouse embryos called blastocysts.
These are then implanted into a female
mouse, who gives birth to the mutant
mice that are bred for study. Dr. Oliver
Smithies, with whom Hinsdale studied,
received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or
Medicine in 2007 for discoveries in this
technology. Hinsdale used this technique
to generate mice mutant in proteoglycans.
Using the recently generated knockout mouse model of proteoglycan biosynthesis, Hinsdale’s laboratory is revealing
important roles of extracellular matrix
proteoglycans on epithelial cell homeostasis. One important novel finding in
these mice is that decreased extracellular matrix proteoglycans cause organ
fibrosis and cyst development in the liver
and tubule dilation in the kidney that is
a possible pre-cystic lesion. These are all
defects seen in PKD patients.
“We are using the mice to help us
understand why patients get sick, at
what age, how fast they get really sick,
whether they require dialysis or a kidney
transplant, and how the extracellular
matrix around the cells affects that,”
Hinsdale said.
This is important since 70 percent
of patients with PKD have considerable
morbidity due to organ fibrosis and liver
cysts. Therefore, their results predict
that proteoglycans may be important
genetic modifiers of cyst development.
Since fibrosis of the liver and kidney
and alterations in extracellular matrix
proteoglycans are often found to develop
together in multiple disease syndromes,
their results may be important and
applicable to the treatment of many
kidney and liver diseases. The long-term
goal of Hinsdale’s research group is to
identify the cellular mechanisms responsible for these changes.
“I think it is good they are doing
research on PKD,” Darr said. “I used to
travel to Colorado with my mom and
younger sister to let them run tests on
me at the University of Colorado. The
first visit I made up there was at the age
of 4 with my mom.”

The PKD Foundation is committed
to discovering treatments and a
cure for Polycystic Kidney Disease.
Its mission is to promote research,
advocacy, education, support and
awareness to discover treatments
and a cure for PKD and improve the
lives of all it affects. The vision of the
PKD Foundation is that one day no
one will suffer the full effects of PKD.
The website (www.pkdcure.org) has
more information on the genetic
disease along with testimonials from
people affected. The website also
has many different ways for people
to contribute to the foundation
through donations and advocacy.

Having attended both national and
local PKD foundation meetings, Hinsdale has had a chance to meet people
like Darr and Smith who are affected by
this disease.
“It is an eye opener to see that
people really do exist who are affected
by this debilitating disease. It puts a
face on the disease that is unforgettable,” Hinsdale said.
Even though work takes up a large
portion of his time, Hinsdale still enjoys
finding the time for leisure activities like
fishing and biking.
“I can never stop thinking about my
research and work,” Hinsdale said. “It
can become stressful at times and very
difficult for my family, but I try to do my
best for them.”
He says they are very understanding
and supportive.
“I would rather run than bike, but I
am just getting too old,” Hinsdale said
jokingly.
Now after her transplant, he and
Mandy Darr have that in common. She
takes part in the Oklahoma Walk for a Cure
to try to raise money for the cause.
Paige Vandaveer

Research at Oklahoma State University • www.research.okstate.edu

9

FAPC shifts into high
gear and partners with a
national company to benefit
Oklahomaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s food industry

10

Research at Oklahoma State University â&#x20AC;˘ www.research.okstate.edu

Y

ou ride on an automated
conveyor belt rolling through a
darkened tunnel, passing several
pieces of equipment, each with a specific
purpose — rinse, soap, foam and dry.
You exit squeaky clean and free of flaws.
What if this same concept was
applied to meat products to eliminate the possible bacteria that
could harm consumers and devastate a meat manufacturer?
Oklahoma State University’s Robert M. Kerr Food & Agricultural Products Center is doing
just that — researching what some
are calling a “carwash for meat.”
Preparing to enter
The FAPC is collaborating with
Ross Industries Inc. of Midland, Va., to
study using antimicrobial spray treatments on blade-tenderized meat.
“Many companies in the meat
industry use mechanical tenderization to render cuts of beef more tender
than they currently are,” said Peter
Muriana, FAPC food microbiologist.
One mechanical tenderization
process is blade tenderization, in which
a group of blades pierce a cut of meat.
While the process improves tenderness,
it also can create an opportunity for
bacteria to potentially enter the meat.
“The United States Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety
and Inspection Service has recently
taken issue with mechanically tenderized beef as non-intact beef,” Muriana
said. “The concern is that pathogenic
E. coli 0157:H7 or other Shiga-toxin
producing E. coli serotypes, may be on
the surface of the meat and could be

translocated into the interior of what
may appear as solid beef cuts, such as
tenderized steaks. It could manifest
itself as a health hazard if someone
were to consume a tenderized steak
that was cooked rare or medium rare.”
Rolling through the process
To tackle this issue and reduce
the risk of bacteria, the FAPC teamed
up with Ross Industries, one of
the largest manufacturers of meat
tenderizers, food packaging equipment and food processing systems,
to research the application of antimicrobial sprays to treat meat.

“It’s kind of like a brushless car
wash for meat,” Muriana said, to
put the concept in laymen’s terms.
The meat is loaded in the front end
of the machine and is pulled through
an antimicrobial spray system. Then,
the meat continues on and reaches
the blades used for tenderization.
“We wanted to prove that a blade
tenderizer with a contamination intervention integrated into it would reduce
microbial contamination risks and
prevent recalls,” said Wayne Spillner,
Ross’ manager of processing equipment
development. “We wanted to conduct
research at an academic facility to
ensure confidence in the research.”
The initial project included using
14 different antimicrobials from 10
different suppliers, all approved for
use on meat by the FDA and USDA.
“We examined the antimicrobials
for effectiveness against E. coli 0157:H7
on inoculated lean beef discs passing
through the Ross spray system, as well
as the effectiveness of antimicrobials on
beef sub-primals in combination with
blade tenderization,” Muriana said.
A Clean Exit
According to Muriana, the initial
results revealed that those antimicrobials showing the best
microbial reduction demonstrated
the least microbial translocation during beef
tenderization.
story continues >

Research at Oklahoma State University • www.research.okstate.edu

11

PHOTO / REBECCA BAILEY
“I believe the United
“We proved that if you
States has the safest food
have an effective intervensupply in the world,” Nichols
tion product, you minimize
said. “However, with that
the risk of dragging potenbeing said, I believe the
tial pathogenic bacteria
food industry is constantly
from the surface of a steak
working to make sure
or roast into the center of
that food is continuously
the meat,” Spillner said.
safe for consumers.”
Ross has implemented
This kind of research
spray systems on the
is what limits the amount
front end of its commerof outbreaks caused by
cial blade tenderizers since
foodborne illnesses.
the study’s completion.
“Consumers’ health
“Our information shows
and the livelihoods of food
over 50 percent of the meat
manufacturers are on the
in the marketplace has been
line if there are outbreaks
tenderized to improve its
or food recalls,” Nichols
palatability,” Spillner said. “If
said. “Any kind of food safety
we can enhance the safety
research is considered insurof non-intact meat, meat
ance for the food manuwill continue to be reasonfacturers’ livelihoods and
ably priced, safe and enjoythe health of consumers.”
able for the consumer.”
Williams called
According to Spillner, the
this research relevant
research was accepted by the
to any consumer who
USDA and has been mentioned
purchases meat products.
in articles, which has led to
“This research benefits
more interest in the research.
Peter Muriana, a food microbiologist at OSU’s Robert M. Kerr
consumers in that they can
“Having the availability
Food & Agricultural Products Center, watches as an antimicontinue to enjoy a beef steak
of an academic outlet in
crobial spray is applied to a cut of blade-tenderized meat. The
or roast at a cooked temperaresearch is beneficial when
FAPC has partnered with industry to evaluate the spray’s ability
to prevent the spread of harmful bacteria.
ture that they love, rare to
a customer comes to us
well done, with the assurand asks, ‘How can I do a
“You can address a product’s flavor,
ance that it is safe,” Williams said.
validation study?’ … We have somequality, how it eats and appears on the
Although they have achieved these
where to send them,” Spillner said. “It’s
plate,
but before anything else, the
results, the FAPC and Ross Indusbeen a good collaborative partnerproduct must be assured to be 100
tries will continue to carry on research
ship that brings additional customers
percent wholesome and safe to consume,” regarding blade tenderization.
to OSU, as well as to Ross Industries,
Williams said. “This research plays a
“We will continue to research
but a real winner is the processing
huge role in addressing this issue.”
with Ross Industries to find additional
industry when they use this informaThis research helped Chef’s
and better solutions,” Muriana said.
tion to get impactful results once we
Requested
revise the composition of
The discovery made by this research
have them summarized and published.”
its meat marinades. Based on this
will lead to continuous research develThis information is useful to
research, and previous work done
opment to ensure safe and wholemeat equipment companies, procesby Muriana, Chef’s Requested was
some products for consumers.
sors and antimicrobial suppliers.
able to utilize one of the antimicro“The more intervention effectiveness
“Antimicrobial suppliers are using
bials that allowed an enhancement
we can apply to fruits and vegetables,
our data to help educate customers,
in flavor, plus increasing the shelf life
as well as meat and poultry products,
and Ross Industries has sold more
of its refrigerated beef products.
means less risk to the public,” Spillner
machines,” Muriana said. “The safer
said. “If we can add additional safety
their customers manufacture prodDown the road ahead
hurdles
with minimum efforts or cost,
ucts, the more capable they are of
Sherry Nichols, the wife of a beef
the
food
supply chain is going to be safer,
selling products with low safety risks.”
producer in Arnett, Okla., and an avid
and
America
is going to be healthier.”
John Williams, president of
beef consumer herself, said she believes
Rebecca Bailey
Chef’s Requested Foods of Oklathe food safety research being conducted
homa City, supports this research and
at the FAPC benefits consumers as well
stresses how food safety is a critical
as beef producers and manufacturers.
priority for food manufacturers.

12

Research at Oklahoma State University • www.research.okstate.edu

The
Power
of

PR

Derina Holtzhausen
PHOTO / PHIL SHOCKLEY

OSU professor views public relations
through a different lens
STORY BEGINS >>

Research at Oklahoma State University â&#x20AC;˘ www.research.okstate.edu

13

O

“The political transition in South Africa
led me to critiquing how
powerful organizations
and people use public relations to promote their own
agenda and to strengthen
their own power,” she
says. “That critique led
me to learning how power
in Western society works,
which eventually led me to
a postmodern approach.”
Today, Holtzhausen is
one of the foremost experts
on postmodern public
relations, a fairly new

PHOTO PROVIDED

SU professor
Derina R.
Holtzhausen
knows the field of
public relations is often
seen as frivolous.
And why not? People
in the profession polish
the public’s perception of
fat-cat corporate executives (think of Enron’s
Kenneth Lay), rehab
the images of hardpartying celebrities
(Charlie Sheen) and spin
the truth for politicians
everywhere (pick one).

Holtzhausen celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Association for
Education in Journalism and Mass Communication with students and
faculty from the School of Media and Strategic Communications.

But Holtzhausen,
director of the Oklahoma
State University School
of Media and Strategic
Communications, argues
that PR is a meaningful
profession. As a native
Afrikaner, she saw the role
it played during apartheid in South Africa.

14

Research at Oklahoma State University • www.research.okstate.edu

research field in academia.
International business communications
expert David McKie, a
professor at the University of Waikato in New
Zealand, calls Holtzhausen
the major writer on postmodern public relations internationally.

“Dr. Holtzhausen has
established a solid body of
work in top journals and
produced the first fulllength book study on the
field, which is highly rated
around the world,” he says.
Rebuilding a country
Holtzhausen didn’t
start out in PR — or even
studying it. In 1971, she
earned bachelor’s degrees
in Afrikaans Dutch
Literature, German and
psychology from the
University of Pretoria,
one of the largest universities in South Africa.
She followed a
creative path after graduation, helping specialneeds teens, working as a
journalist and managing
PR for a small ad firm.
In 1976, she and her
husband, Paul, opened
Holtzhausen Publicity
and Advertising in
Johannesburg, handling
accounts for banks, insurance companies and
savings and loans.
Holtzhausen also
honed her PR skills and
continued her education,
earning a master’s in Afrikaans literature in 1990
and a doctorate in communication science in 1995.
In 1992, she was
hired as head of corporate communications
for the South African
Tourism Board, one year
after apartheid ended.
Holtzhausen’s job was
to help rebuild South
Africa’s global image.
“PR practitioners
became the bridge-

builders between grassroots movements and
the powerful organizations they worked for,”
she says. “I had a critical
role during this transition. This role shaped my
interest in postmodern
PR as a form of activism.”
Starting over
While in South Africa,
she had met University
of Maryland Professors
James and Larissa Grunig,
a husband-and-wife team
of world-renowned public
relations academics.
During her doctoral
research, Holtzhausen
received a $5,000 grant
from the South African
Human Sciences Research
Council and traveled
to College Park, Md.
The two were
impressed with Holzhausen’s work, encouraging
her to teach in the U.S.
“They saw something in
me and it opened the way
for my career,” she says.
The pair kept her
apprised about job
openings, which led to
Holtzhausen’s finding
a faculty opening at
the University of South
Florida’s School of Mass
Communications.
In 1997, Holtzhausen
accepted a job as an assistant professor at USF in
Tampa. The timing was
perfect for her family’s
move to the U.S. Her
husband, Paul, found a
magazine job in Florida,
and their son, who had
just graduated high school,
was preparing to study
film-making in America.

“I completely
started my career
over when I moved to
the U.S.,” she says.
Starting over wasn’t
easy — part of her new
venture meant publishing
scholarly articles. Not
being familiar with the
journal academic process
in the U.S. hampered
her efforts, she says.
“It took three
years to get my first
article accepted,” she
says. “I was shot down
in flames each time I
submitted an article.”
Since that start,
Holtzhausen has published
27 scholarly articles and
book chapters, presented
her findings at more
than 45 conferences and
received more than 20
grants and awards. She
has mentored more than
35 graduate students in
her career, several of whom
have become professors at
the University of Miami,
University of Maryland
and Georgia State University, among other schools.
In 2008, an OSU
search committee
approached Holtzhausen
and asked her to apply
for director of the OSU
School of Journalism
and Broadcasting. Her
research had come to
committee members’
attention through the
Association for Education in Journalism and
Mass Communication, the
most influential organization in journalism
and mass communication education in the U.S.

Holtzhausen did
so, won the position and
for the next few years
worked to rebuild a
school whose mission
was rapidly changing.
“There were hints of
the school’s name being
changed when I started,
so as school head, the
first order of business
was to review the curriculum,” she says. What
she discovered was the
school needed a name
that would more accurately describe its mission.
In 2010 — in the
face of some resistance from alumni and
professors — the school
changed its name to the
OSU School of Media
and Strategic Communications. Bachelor’s
degrees now are offered
in strategic communication, multimedia journalism and sports media.
“The curriculum
changes better prepare
students for successful
careers in today’s rapidly
evolving media landscape,” she says.
Making sense
of language
Along with her
administrative duties,
Holtzhausen keeps up
with that rapidly changing
media landscape through
the research she started
at Rand Afrikaans
University (now University of Johannesburg) in
Johannesburg in 1995.

She has taken her
research and published
it in a book titled Public
Relations as Activism:
Postmodern Approaches
to Theory & Practice.
Holtzhausen
uses vignettes to
explain her studies.
The 2007 Don Imus
saga is a perfect example
of the power of language,
she says. Imus, a popular
radio host, referred to
the members of Rutgers
University’s female basketball team as “nappyheaded hos” and “rough
girls from Rutgers”
because they had tattoos.
“This is a cautionary
tale to PR practitioners
on how the language we
use can shape stereotypes and belief systems,”
Holtzhausen says. “It also
shows how power functions in our society and
how PR professionals can
become enamored with
powerful media personalities without thinking of
the ethical consequences.
“Imus was a regular
outlet for PR professionals to promote
books and powerful
careers. They were well
aware of his views but
used him nonetheless.”
Another example
she uses is that of Emily

Hobhouse, a British
welfare campaigner who
worked to change the
conditions inside the
British concentration
camps in South Africa
built for Boer women
and children during
the Second Boer War.
Hobhouse formed a
relief fund that got little
attention from the British.
So instead, using the
power of language and her
privileged upbringing, she
wrote about the atrocities
of war in a book that is
said to have ended the war.
“Hobhouse is another
example of how those
with power used their
PR skills to change the
mindset in Britain about
the war,” Holtzhausen says.
Holtzhausen’s
research is loaded with
other examples of how
PR can be used in negative and positive ways.
All the examples have one goal.
“The major focus
of postmodern is the
critique of power — a
focus on ethics,” she
says. “Language is not
benign. Language is not
neutral. Our language
in PR is important. We
contribute to the perceptions of others.”
Lorene A. Roberson

Want to see more about
Derina Holtzhausen and
her work?
You can watch a video by scanning
the code on the right or byvisiting

journalism.okstate.edu/
index.php/faculty/
69-derina-holtzhausen.

Research at Oklahoma State University • www.research.okstate.edu

15

A Model for
Student Growth

A

research model designed
by Mwarumba Mwavita is
making a significant positive impact on one Oklahoma
school district and gaining notice
across the state and nation.
Mwavita, who teaches in the
Research, Evaluation, Measurement
and Statistics (REMS) program in the
College of Education’s School of Educational Studies, developed a comprehensive model for mapping student
achievement growth. His unique bigpicture approach tracks student growth
in a single school year and considers
a variety of factors that can influence
student achievement.
Mwavita has worked closely with
administrators, teachers and students in the
Western Heights School District in southwest Oklahoma City over the last four years,
implementing the model and analyzing the
data to better understand challenges and
find solutions that are effective.
“Most studies have been working
only on mapping students’ growth
from year to year, (comparing) different

students,” Mwavita says. “For instance, a
third-grade student in one school year is
compared to third-grade students in the
next class. The same students are not
tracked over time.”
As part of Mwavita’s model,
students are pre-tested at the beginning of a school year, given a second
test in the winter and finally a last test
in the spring. The test is standardized,
computerized and adaptive to individual ability. It has been aligned with
Oklahoma’s Priority Academic Student
Skills (PASS) but can easily transition to
the state’s new Common Core Standards.
The test is also diagnostic, revealing if a
group of students does not understand
a concept.
“It helps inform instruction, indicating what teachers should focus on,”
Mwavita says.
“This assessment model is data-based,
but goes well beyond the normal testing
program,” says OSU Regents Professor
Dale Fuqua, who also teaches in the
REMS program. “It provides timely feedback to both students and teachers.”

The immediate feedback motivates
students, helping them track progress and
set goals. It is also valuable for parents.
“Parents are well-served by having
immediate results several times a year
to inform their participation in decisionmaking and use of interventions with
students,” Fuqua says.
In the sophisticated system, all of
the data gathered is recorded and accessible electronically by teachers and
administrators. It has led to a culture
where Western Heights depends on data
for decision-making, and it has proved
powerful for teachers.
More and more, discussion about
education centers on evaluating
teachers for effectiveness. Mwavita
has seen strong buy-in from Western
Heights’ teachers and students.
“We’re big believers in adaptive
testing,” Western Heights school superintdent Joe Kitchens says. “We absolutely believe that it’s critical to know
who students are when determining
whether a teacher is successful or not.”
Teachers have instant access and

“There is passion for making
a difference in the schools
in the state. Our job is to be
resourceful to all stakeholders.
How can we best serve the
citizens of Oklahoma and
be efficient in making a
difference in our schools?”
– Mwarumba Mwavita
16

Research at Oklahoma State University • www.research.okstate.edu

Mwarumba Mwavita from the College of Education’s School
of Educational Studies has developed a comprehensive
model for mapping student achievement growth, and it’s
making an impact in one Oklahoma school district.

PHOTO / GARY LAWSON

receive training on how to read the data,
allowing them to respond by immediately designing instruction to meet
students’ needs.
“A teacher has these students for one
year,” Mwavita says. “Within that one
year, you can evaluate a teacher’s effectiveness (with) that test after controlling
for other variables such as initial ability,
parental involvement, whether they are
in special education classes or have free
and reduced lunch status. If you put all
of them into the model and what will
remain is not explained by all of these
other variables, we can use that residual
effect to predict the teaching impact.”
Western Heights had battled
mobility, with students moving in and out
of the district. This drove the decision to
test students at the beginning of the year
on all the content they will be covering. It
helps teachers know where their students
initially stand academically.
“Dr. Mwavita has been so critical
in helping us understand how to look at
this data in a proactive way to use it in a
proactive way,” Kitchens explains.
Another element of this model is the
creation of and support for Professional

Learning Communities (PLC). The PLCs
meet outside the normal school day,
giving teachers the opportunity to share
information, learn more about their
students and identify better ways to
meet their needs in the classrooms and
beyond. Teachers are compensated for
their time and work.
“(Mwavita) has a great way with
teachers,” Kitchens says. “His ability to
interact with them in regard to what
they see and what action they may
take, I think may be the most important thing of all. He has a unique
capacity to put people at ease and
to have an open discussion about
what the real issues are and what
can be done on behalf of students.”
Mwavita came to Oklahoma State
University from Kenya to pursue a
doctorate in educational psychology,
specializing in REMS. After completing
the doctoral in 2005, he accepted a
visiting assistant professor position at
OSU. He has also served as Western
Heights’ director of school improvement and instructional research and
continues to support the district while
working at OSU. His research focuses on

mapping student achievement growth
and improving student performance and
teacher education.
Mwavita’s work has garnered
national notice. He communicates regularly with the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education
Statistics and has been asked to present
at professional development workshops,
showcasing his work with Western
Heights in terms of growth modeling and
changing the culture of the school.
“It is not one size fits all, but the principles of the model will work across school
districts,” Mwavita says. “Each school
may have its own unique challenges, and
the model will take that into account.”
For example, a district with many highachieving students can use the model to
help determine how best to challenge,
accelerate and motivate learning.
“A beauty of the model is that you
can see it is more accurate and fair
for teachers,” Mwavita says. “You can
see growth even if (students) aren’t
achieving at the average. Teachers are
not ‘graded’ in the same way for students
who only spend two months of the year
in their classes. It truly looks at the
impact the teacher has on the student in
the time they teach them.”
The work is a strong example of the
university’s land-grant mission being
carried out. Currently, Mwavita and
his colleagues at OSU are in continuing
contact with other school districts in the
state as well as with the State Department of Education.
“There is passion for making a difference in (the schools) in the state. Our job
is to be resourceful to all stakeholders,”
Mwavita says. “How can we best serve the
citizens of Oklahoma and be efficient in
making a difference in our schools?”
That’s the question that guides
the work.
Christy Lang

Research at Oklahoma State University • www.research.okstate.edu

17

During the Eagle Adventure, grant coordinator Sara Mata helps students
make shakers for the snake dance, a traditional form of physical activity.
PHOTOS PROVIDED

Human Sciences Research focuses on
Native American Health and Well-being
According to the 2010 U.S. Census,
Oklahoma has the second-largest
number of American Indians in the
country. Professors in Oklahoma State
University’s College of Human Sciences
are steering a range of research projects to improve the physical and
developmental health of this significant portion of the state’s population.
Several of those studies concern
Type 2 diabetes. On average, American
Indian and Alaska Native adults are
2.6 times more likely to have diabetes
than non-Hispanic whites of similar
ages are, according to the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nutritional sciences professor Brenda
Smith and University of Oklahoma
Health Science Center researchers began
a study in 2007 of 300 Native American
women over the age of 50 to understand
the connection among diabetes, inflammation and osteoporosis. She says estimates are that by 2020, half of all women
over 50 will suffer at least one bone fracture — and 25 percent of men will, too.
For people with diabetes, the chances
of a bone fracture are twice as high.

18

Research at Oklahoma State University • www.research.okstate.edu

Since Native American women
are largely underrepresented in osteoporosis studies, interest from tribes,
clinicians and participants was high.
Smith says, “Excitement for the study
spread by word of mouth so efficiently that recruitment for participants was made easier than usual.”
The team looked at bone mineral
density, bone metabolism and inflammation’s role. Calcium and vitamin
D levels and other nutritional variables were measured. The study
also looked at exercise, particularly what the study participants
did as teens and young adults when
peak bone mass was accumulating.
“Based on data we have,” Smith
says, “we anticipate at one point being
able to determine the relationship
between diabetes and osteoporosis.”
The participants returned for two
follow-up visits, a year apart, to have their
bones rechecked. Many reported they
were making positive changes for their
health and expressed a desire to pass on
better health to the next generation, an
attitude Smith calls “heart-warming.”

Another nutritional sciences
professor, Stephany Parker, is interested in Type 2 diabetes prevention. Since 2006, Parker and her
team have been working with Sarah
Miracle, the Chickasaw Nation Get
Fresh! program manager, and others
to create a participant-oriented social
marketing program to help prevent the
disease in Native American families.
“One after another, mothers
talked about parents or grandparents who had suffered from the
disease,” Parker says. “And they
expressed concern for their children.”
That concern is not without cause.
The CDC and Prevention Office of
Minority Health Disparities reports that
Native Americans ages 10-19 have the
highest prevalence of Type 2 diabetes
among people younger than 20.
To that end, Parker and her team
devised the Eagle Adventure program,
which is implemented in schools with
a high proportion of Native American
students and incorporates regional
Indian languages and tribal activities.

Revitalizing tradition was important as well, so Parker came up with the
idea of a play based on the CDC’s Eagle
books to bring the Native American
tradition of storytelling to the program.
“Not only does the play bring the
story to life, but when children are
watching the characters Rain that
Dances and Thundercloud, they have
role models,” Parker says. “They see
the characters learn to choose foods
from the garden and be more physically active, and they learn.”
Each play is followed by four
in-class lessons where children talk
about their own health and nutrition habits, learn Native American
words, try new ingredients and receive
recipes, activities and games to take
home. More than 2,000 Oklahoma
students in grades 1-3 have participated in the Eagle Adventure program
since its February 2010 launch.
In 2012 the Eagle Adventure
Program won the Dr. Rodney Huey
Memorial Champion of Oklahoma
Health award for its unique and
effective approach to improve Oklahoma health. Recent results indi-

Education, Hubbs-Tait
suggested curriculum adaptations for each child’s
specific academic areas
needing strengthening,
based on test scores
each fall. Several tools
were used to help
more than 45 percent
of the preschool children meet age-appropriate levels of verbal reasoning, pictorial memory and perceptual reasoning.
“The individualized, home- and
classroom-instruction curricula
helped, as did dedicated staff and
parents, culturally relevant materials and lessons, two teachers per
class, and a national board-certified
Frog Street curriculum,” she says.
Frog Street is a bilingual/bicultural
curriculum that integrates English and
Spanish, but the Oklahoma teachers
substituted the Pawnee language and
culture for the Spanish components
of the program. In addition, Warren
Pratt Jr., an adjunct American Indian
studies instructor at Pawnee Nation
College, taught the Pawnee language

“One after another, mothers talked about
parents or grandparents who had suffered
from the disease (Type 2 diabetes). And they
expressed concern for their children.”
­­­— Stephany Parker
cate that more than 78 percent of
children in the program wanted to
eat more vegetables, and nearly 70
percent said they were doing the “Eagle
Moving” activities with their parents.
Working with the Pawnee Nation’s
Pa<ee Pakoo<oo (pronounced padee
pakoodo) Early Learning Center, which
serves 3- and 4-year-old children and
their families, Human Development
and Family Science Regents Professor
Laura Hubbs-Tait has also been helping
Oklahoma’s Native American children.
An external evaluator for the fiveyear project funded by the U.S. Department of Education Office of Indian

to the teachers each summer, who
in turn taught it to the children.
“We found the academic progress that we expected,” Hubbs-Tait
says. “However, without the increase
in emotional development and behavioral self-control, we do not believe
that we would have seen the growth in
cognitive and language milestones.”
Another professor interested in lifestage adaptation is Tammy Henderson,
who is researching the roles, needs and
challenges of Alaska Native grandparents, a population rarely examined.
Funded with $1.15 million from
the National Science Foundation,

Henderson is learning
how technology, a
mixed cash and subsistence economy and
popular culture from the
Western states are altering
life for Alaska Natives.
With more grandparents
serving as primary caretakers for grandchildren, fiscal challenges are on the rise.
Social and legal services are sometimes
needed. By studying a diverse group
of grandparents, for whom tradition,
family and community are such core
values, the hope is that more will be
known about grandparents everywhere.
“Sometimes it can be challenging
when cultures clash,” Henderson
says. “It can be difficult to get a child
to sit and bead when handheld electronics and cellphones are present.”
One of the needs most cited by
study participants was a return to
informal gatherings where they could
share personal experiences. Some
of the grandparents also report a
need for recuperative private time,
time with friends or a spouse.
Since Alaska Natives are such
an unstudied group, Henderson
says, “People are very excited, especially about being able to document their experiences.”
All of these efforts share a common
thread: They seek to work interactively with Native American and Native
Alaskan populations by listening to
their concerns and incorporating their
values, culture and preferences into
strategies to improve health and wellbeing and enhance life at all stages.
Laura Crutcher

Want to hear the
researchers and parents
talk firsthand about the
Eagle Adventure?
Scan the code below.
Video is also available
by visiting

ostate.tv/channels/
college-human-sciences.

Research at Oklahoma State University • www.research.okstate.edu

19

B
a
g
l
n
a
i
Balancing
Ba nc g
Act
OSU study looks at the best ways to determine fair
executive compensation and avoid risky business tricks.

O

pen the Wall Street Journal’s
business section any day. You’ll
see several stories on CEO pay.
One story from April 11, 2012,
reports that, due to the company’s
unmet performance goals, Morgan
Stanley Chief Executive James
Gorman lost a quarter of his compensation from 2010 to 2011, netting him
only $10.5 million, much of which
was in “stock-based compensation.”
Another reports a huge stock
award pushed Gap CEO Glenn
Murphy’s salary up 64 percent to $9.7
million. That’s $3.1 million in stock
and $3.2 million in options vested over
several years, the Journal reports.
Executive pay is a big, big deal.
Not just because it’s serious money,
but because of how it affects who
receives it. Often, it’s enhanced with
millions of dollars in stocks. What
decisions does that encourage?
“The concept of designing optimal
compensation has been a point of
interest for quite a while in economics
and finance,” says Ali Nejadma-

20

Research at Oklahoma State University • www.research.okstate.edu

layeri, an assistant finance professor
at OSU. “How do you compensate so
that the corporate decisions such as
financing decisions of the firm make
sense and increase the firm’s value?”

“Stock options
are almost like
letting them take
money and go to
Vegas and play
roulette with it.”
—Ali Nejadmalayeri
How to reward?
Businesses often struggle to reward
performance while not encouraging
risky behavior. Designing the best ways
to pay the best employees is the subject
of a new study by Nejadmalayeri. The
study, “Managerial Compensation
and the Debt Replacement Decision,”

was published in 2011 in the prestigious Journal of Corporate Finance.
Nejadmalayeri found that firms
that grant high-powered executive
compensation such as stock options
are more adept in taking on bank loans.
This is because banks and similar
lending institutions can investigate
firms’ profitability and detect malfeasance that could lead to financial
trouble later. And if something comes
up later, banks can detect it because
they can check into a firm’s innermost financial records throughout the
term of the loan. That is, of course, if
they’re doing their “due diligence.”
That has a “disciplining” effect,
Nejadmalayeri says. Backing highpowered contracts with private lending
can reward good performance while
also protecting the firm and discouraging overly risky behavior, when
paying managers and executives in
stocks can have the opposite effect.
“Stock options are almost like
letting them take money and go to
Vegas and play roulette with it. If they

PHOTO / GARY LAWSON

gamble, it’s on my dime. If they fail, I’m
going to be penalized. But if they win,
they share the winnings. Obviously,
they have every incentive to go do that.
That’s basically the ‘agency problem.’”
A topic in nearly every college
MBA program, an “agency problem”
occurs when management, shareholders and owners have differing
goals. It was thought for a long time
that tying managers’ compensation to the firm’s stock price by
paying them partly in shares was
a good way to fight the problem.
That practice really took off in
the 1990s, especially in the technology
industry, Nejadmalayeri notes. The
problem is that it could encourage
unnecessary risks because the market
rewards risk taking to an extent.
Managers might be overly aggressive in acquisitions if acquisitions
can make their firms’ stock prices
rise and increase their compensation — money that they view as
theirs to lose but not “theirs.”
“It can encourage managers to
take on risk that they should never
have touched,” he says. “The beauty
of a debt contract with a bank is that
it prevents them from doing that.”
Money and motivation
That sounds simple enough. But
why not just pay people more?
Because research has shown that
so-called external extrinsic rewards fail
to motivate, or, at best, generate motivation that is short-lived, reports OSU
management professor Ken Eastman.
In fact, they sometimes have the
opposite effect. Employees don’t often
see the relationship between performance and pay. Pay also creates
too much of an emphasis on money
instead of other rewards. And money
lacks an “appreciation effect.” Over
time, employees see raises as entitlements rather than rewards.
Nejadmalayeri, an expert in corporate financing and risky bond pricing,
began looking at the problem a few

Ali Nejadmalayeri, an OSU assistant finance professor, had his study on executive compensation
published in the Journal of Corporate Finance.

years ago. He pored over financial data
from public and private debt, loans, as
well as the information OSU collects on
compensation contracts at large firms.
He performed what’s called a choice
analysis to figure out what affected
firms’ choices of private or public debt.
“What we find is higher powered
incentives make it more likely for a firm
to choose private debt, be it a bank or
privately placed debt,” Nejadmalayeri
says. That makes sense, because “when
you give high-incentive contracts, it
might be very helpful to combine that
with some sort of a high-power bank
borrowing or private lending so there is
a safeguard in place — someone who can
come in and look at things regularly.”
Financial future
What about the future? Banks
were staggered by the biggest financial crisis in more than 80 years. You
know, the one that made $11 trillion in wealth vanish into thin air due
to some shenanigans in the financial sector. Speculation has abounded
since the financial crisis ended in
2008 that banks as we know them may
be on the endangered species list.
Nejadmalayeri says he’s not sure
how the crisis will affect firms’ habits
with using banks in this way. Once, there
was talk that banks would be replaced

by private equity firms. Today, despite
backing from hedge funds and private
equity, corporate financing still benefits from banks’ participation, he says.
Corporate borrowing globally, and to
a lesser extent nationally in the United
States, has been rising since the crisis
ended, a fact that he finds intriguing.
Regardless, involving banks’
scrutiny in high-powered incentives contracts may be a good
idea, Nejadmalayeri says.
“If you say, it’s OK to give managers
stock options, that’s fine. But understand that there’s a flip side to that
story. It could expose you to the agency
problem. What we’re saying is basically
align yourself with the bondholders.”
Nejadmalayeri has been an OSU
professor since 2006. He is a former
electrical engineer who worked in the
energy business before starting on an
MBA in 1995 at Texas A&M. He finished
his doctoral degree in 2001 at the
University of Arizona and taught for five
years at the University of Nevada-Reno.
He is an award-winning researcher
and instructor. He took first place in
2008 at the Rotman International
Trading Center’s competition, where
participants trade securities on an electronic market to see whose performs the
best. In 2005, he won the McGraw-Hill/
Irwin Distinguished Paper Award.
Matt Elliott

Research at Oklahoma State University • www.research.okstate.edu

21

OSU-Tulsa associate professor Jay Hanan is leading research
to create a stronger, lighter body armor for combat.
ilitary troops and law
enforcement professionals could soon be
wearing stronger body
armor designed by a professor at
Oklahoma State University–Tulsa.
Jay Hanan, an associate
professor of mechanical and
aerospace engineering, has
been working to design a
composite plate that would be
added to current body armor
designs to increase protection for soldiers in the field.
“People think that when
they’re wearing body armor, it’s

22

Research at Oklahoma State University • www.research.okstate.edu

protecting them from injury,” said
Hanan. “In reality, the armor is
stopping the bullet, but the impact
can still damage the body. That
could include broken ribs or organ
damage that will take them out of
commission during a fight, even
though the bullet is captured.”
The key is to reduce the back
face signature, or the amount of
material from the armor that goes
into the body after being hit by
a bullet. The depth of the signature can range from a few millimeters to two inches, depending
on the strength of the bullet.

“Dr. Hanan’s research will
not only save lives of soldiers in
combat, but it will also create
new jobs that will impact our
economy right here in Oklahoma,”
said Howard Barnett, president
of OSU-Tulsa and OSU Center for
Health Sciences. “This research is
another way that OSU is fulfilling
our land-grant mission and making
a brighter future for all of us.”
Body armor is categorized in
levels one to four, with level one
offering the least protection.
“The National Institutes
of Justice has a standard that

requires that the back face signature can only go a certain number
of millimeters into the body before
it’s unacceptable for a given level,”
said Hanan, who is working to
strengthen level three and four
armor. “The plates are designed to
add extra strength to protect the
most vital organs during an attack.”
Hanan, a former NASA scientist, works with materials science,
or the study of structure, properties and performance of such
things as metals, ceramics, semiconductors, polymers, composites
and biomaterials. Using ceramics,
Hanan has combined his material
with existing body armor materials to create an additional layer
of protection without adding much
weight or encumbering movement.
“Our goal is make sure the
bullet causes the least amount
of damage to the body,” said
Hanan. “When we compare our
technology to the others available on the market, we reduce the
back face signature by between
twenty to thirty percent.”
For soldiers in the field, that
could mean a recovery time

of seconds versus minutes or
being completely knocked out,
a critical factor in the battlefield. Hanan has tested the armor
in the laboratory and is hoping
to begin field-testing soon.
The project morphed out of
work by Donna Branson at the OSU
Institute of Protective Apparel
Research and Technology in
Stillwater, who is working on flexible suits for fire protection. After
learning about the research, Hanan
volunteered his composite plates
to be customized for the project.
Hanan received funding
from the U.S. Navy to create
a stronger armor plate. In the
process of doing so, he discovered that his design was stronger
than what was already available
on the market. While strength is
a key factor, Hanan also wants
to make sure the armor isn’t
too heavy for use in the field.
“Soldiers are typically carrying
around 109 pounds of equipment in the field, so any pound
we can take away from that is
going to help their joints, help
them move faster and help them

carry other things they need,”
said Hanan. “There are a lot of
important reasons to go lighter.”
In 2010, Hanan’s team came
up with a business plan for a
company that could manufacture
the material needed for the plates.
He also began working with the
Department of Defense to use the
plates in the development of the
next generation of body armor.
With the assistance of a
group of graduate researchers,
Hanan has been working on the
armor project to create the materials as well as prepare it for
marketing. “I would not be able
to do this without assistance
from my students,” he said.
Hanan sees a number of
other practical applications for
the material used in body armor
plates, particularly in aerospace
applications. “While armor had
the immediate application, the
Federal Aviation Administration could approve what we are
creating for use in manufacturing airplane parts,” he said.
The metal glass material, with
its strength and light weight,
makes it an ideal component
for use in a variety of areas.
“The way we make our material
is so different than the way other
people manufacture theirs that it
allows us to think about how we
can use our material in a different
way,” said Hanan. “There’s a
tremendous number of applications we could try, but we’re very
much focused on the armor and
aerospace applications because
those are two areas that are important to Oklahoma’s economy.”
Funding for Hanan’s project
has been provided by the Office
of Naval Research, the Oklahoma
Center for the Advancement
of Science and Technology, the
Department of Defense and the
National Science Foundation.
Sean Kennedy

PHOTO / RYAN JENSEN

Jay Hanan, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, has been
working to design a composite plate that would be added to current body armor designs
to increase protection for soldiers in the field.

Research at Oklahoma State University • www.research.okstate.edu

23

A Smart Garment
for a Healthy Future
An interdisciplinary team has created
a garment that could revolutionize the
treatment of cardiovascular and respiratory
diseases and disorders.

D

r. Bruce Benjamin dreams of
a future where diseases are
treated before they become
problematic. Whether it’s cardiovascular diseases such as coronary artery disease and congestive
heart failure or respiratory diseases
and disorders such as sleep apnea
and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, early diagnosis and
treatment are key to preventing
a life-altering medical event.
“One of the greatest challenges
we face in the battle against cardiovascular and respiratory diseases
and disorders is identifying at-risk
people early so they can begin
treatment,” says Benjamin, interim
vice provost for graduate studies
and associate dean for biomedical
sciences at the Oklahoma State
University Center for Health Sciences
in Tulsa. “In many cases, if a patient
is diagnosed early and begins treatment, a catastrophic event like a
heart attack can be prevented.”
In an effort to make his prevention vision a reality, Benjamin
helped bring together a diverse
group of researchers to create a
Health Smart Garment that will
help diagnose patients earlier by
monitoring their vital signs for
an extended period of time. The
group, consisting of researchers
in biomedical sciences, industrial
engineering and textile science, has
been developing a garment that is

24

Research at Oklahoma State University • www.research.okstate.edu

functional and comfortable to fit
the needs of medical professionals
and patients in a variety of fields.
“Patients will be able to wear
this garment while at home, rather
than in the doctor’s office or in the
hospital,” says Benjamin. “It can
monitor vital signs over a period of
hours or days to give physicians a
more accurate picture of how the
systems in the body are functioning.”
Benjamin’s colleague, Dr. Satish
Bukkapatnam, professor of industrial
engineering and management and the
director of the OSU Sensor Networks
and Complex Systems Research Lab,
has developed a sensor system to
go into the garment. Bukkapatnam
serves as the principal investigator for
an Innovation Corps Grant from the
National Science Foundation to help
develop the garment for market.
“People are craving a solution
for disease diagnosis that is viable
and will help solve their medical
problems,” says Bukkapatnam.
“With this technology, patients
could be treated for diseases they
don’t even know they have yet.”
Designed for patient comfort
and wearability, the garment will
give physicians continual assessment of patients and help detect
abnormal patterns in heart and
breathing rates that are more difficult to discern from traditional tests.
“The whole idea of wearable
electronics has unlimited applica-

tions in all sorts of different aspects
our lives,” says Dr. Mary RuppertStroescu, assistant professor of
apparel design and textile science.
“This project seamlessly integrates technology that monitors vital signs with our fabric to
create a very wearable garment.”
Ruppert-Stroescu has developed
the design of the garment, including
selecting a fabric that is comfortable,
creating a fit that is comfortable and
natural to wear and creating ways for
the garment to house the sensors.
“The smart garment integrates
the sensor technology developed
by our team right into the fabric,”

Want more details
on the Health Smart
Garment?
Scan this code to hear
Mary Ruppert-Stroescu
and Brek Wilkins
discuss the garment’s
creation and potential
uses. Video is also
available by visiting

ostate.tv/topics/research.

says Ruppert-Stroescu. “We have
strategically placed the electrodes,
circuitry and circuit boards so they
are easy to wear, and patients don’t
end up tangled in wires and cords.”
Data could be collected and
stored in the garment or transported wirelessly to a collection
center from which a physician could
download and analyze the signals.
While the garment could be
used in diagnosing a number of
diseases, the team decided to first
focus on diagnosing sleep apnea.
“We chose sleep apnea as the
first target entry point in the device
market because the United States is
experiencing a surge in the number
of individuals with sleep disorder
breathing and these individuals are
not being screened for sleep apnea,”
says Dr. Brek Wilkins, post-doctoral
researcher at OSU-CHS. “About
twenty-five percent of all Americans have sleep disorder breathing,
but due to high (insurance) deductibles, long waiting times and in-clinic
comfort levels, they won’t seek

interdisciplinary approach toward
scientific breakthroughs that
can have a global impact.
“Our faculty are working together
across disciplines to take an innovative approach to address common
issues and come up with creative
solutions,” says Howard Barnett,
president of OSU-Tulsa and OSU
Center for Health Sciences. “The
smart garment project holds the key
to revolutionizing the treatment of cardiovascular
and respiratory diseases
Dr. Mary Ruppert-Stroescu, left, and
and disorders and is
Dr. Brek Wilkins adjust a prototype of
the Health Smart Garment on patient
changing the way we
model Woranat Wongdhamma.
think about patient care.”
While Benjamin
leads the charge on
the medical research, he stresses
that the development of the Health
Smart Garment would not have been
possible without all the members
of interdisciplinary research team.
“The project is so big that no
treatment at a sleep study clinic.”
one discipline, no one individual can
Wilkins says Smart Garments
actually solve the problem,” says
would allow patients to sleep
Benjamin. “You need the theoretcomfortably in their own homes.
ical people who understand how
“It would give individuals with
the body works, the engineers who
possible sleep apnea an alternacan take the ideas that we have
tive path around the barriers to
and create the tools to monitor
an in-clinic diagnosis,” he says.
and interpret the signals from the
In addition to the NSF grant,
body, and the design people who
the team has also received
can create a garment that somea grant from the Oklahoma
body would even decide to put on.”
Center for the Advancement
While the team members are
of Science and Technology to
working to perfect the protofurther develop the garment.
type for diagnosing sleep apnea,
“These grant programs have
they are already looking at other
really taken us outside of our
ways to apply the technology.
research labs and helped us ask
“There is a lot of potential with
the right questions to the find the
this technology, whether it’s for critanswers we needed to transition
ical care in hospitals or for patients
our technology from the lab and
in rural Oklahoma who don’t have
into the marketplace so we can help
access to the same resources that
people,” says Wilkins. “Being in the
marketplace accomplishes something are available in larger communities,”
says Benjamin. “This could potenjust about every scientist wants to
tially be used by everyone.”
do — help people and have a technology that gets used by many.”
The Smart Garment project is
an example of OSU researchers’

SEAN KENNEDY

Research at Oklahoma State University • www.research.okstate.edu

25

Physics + Medicine
= Success

OSU’s new medical physics
graduate degree program
serves students and the state

W

hen Stephen Eller came to
Oklahoma State University,
he thought he wanted
to be an engineer. “I’d always loved
math and science,” says the student
from Haskell. “I just thought engineering would be the best fit for me.”
However, toward the end of his
bachelor’s degree Eller began having
second thoughts. He had a relative, a sister-in-law, working in medical physics. Intrigued, he decided
to find out what it was all about. He
shadowed his sister-in-law’s boss, a
medical physicist, for a summer.
He was hooked.
Eller took a nuclear engineering
course the following fall semester and
has never looked back. In August 2012,
he completed his master’s degree in
medical physics. He is the first student to graduate from OSU’s new
medical physics graduate program.
“I really enjoyed learning the basic
physics of radiation and the historical
component to physics,” he says. “The
historical perspective isn’t emphasized
in engineering. I also enjoyed learning

26

Research at Oklahoma State University • www.research.okstate.edu

more about the fundamentals of matter,
which is what physics is all about.”
Medical physics is a branch of
physics dedicated to radiotherapy
and diagnostic imaging. Most commonly associated with cancer treatment, many medical physicists work in
hospitals alongside nurses and oncologists to design and develop radiation
treatment plans for patients. They
also conduct research and play a vital
role in ensuring radiation equipment, such as X-ray machines and
linear accelerators, work properly.
“People don’t normally think of
a physicist working in a hospital, but
they really have a very important job
in a hospital setting: Making sure that
radiation is administered appropriately,”
Eller says. “Radiation mis-administered
has serious consequences, so there has
to be someone between the oncologist and the therapist who understands
how the equipment works and can
try to prevent those kinds of errors.”
History of medical physics
The melding of physics with medicine isn’t new. In fact, it traces all the

way back to the discovery of X-rays by
physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen
in 1895. The application of these rays
to medical imaging was recognized
and embraced immediately. When the
Nobel Prizes were established at the
turn of the century, Roentgen won the
first prize in physics for his discovery.
Over the last 50 years, physicists
have continued to impact medicine
and win Nobel Prizes for doing so.
Felix Bloch and Edward M. Purcell
shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1952
for the discovery of magnetic resonance,
which led to the development of the
MRI routinely used today to image the
human body. In 1979, Allen McCormack
and Geoffrey Newbold Hounsfield
won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or
Medicine for developing computerized tomography, which has revolutionized imaging due to its ability to provide
images with unprecedented clarity.
Most recently, physicists have
spearheaded the development and
application of linear accelerators for
cancer treatment. Once confined
only to physics laboratories, these

sophisticated, high-energy machines
can deliver beams of energetic electrons or X-rays to malignant tumors
at doses capable of killing cancerous
cells and stopping a tumor’s growth.
“Going back to the discovery of the
X-ray, there’s been a large collaboration
between physics and medicine,” says
Jerimy Polf, assistant physics professor
and coordinator of the medical physics
program at OSU. Polf is a board-certified medical physicist who worked
at M.D. Anderson in Houston before
he returned to his alma mater to teach
and help launch the graduate program.
Medical physics research at OSU
Although it might not lead to discoveries as revolutionary as the X-ray
or developments as monumental as the
CT scan, Polf and students like Eller are
involved in research they believe will
make an impact. One project, a collaboration with scientists at OSU’s Center
for Veterinary Health Sciences, evaluates new ways of using nanoparticles to
improve cancer treatments. Polf calls the
project basic science, and says they’re
just working with cells in a petri dish.
However, the hope is that it will translate into new clinical treatment methods.
“All the major medical physics
discoveries started out as basic science stuff in the lab that translated into
the clinic and the hospitals,” he said.
In another project, Polf and students are developing detectors and
methods to image the radiation beam
and where it is in the body during a
radiation treatment. This project is a
collaboration with the M.D. Anderson
Cancer Center and funded by the
National Institutes of Health. It has
a large potential for impact, Polf says,
especially because it also provides
an image of the elemental composition of the tumor – information that
can be provided to the physician to
determine how the tumor responds
to treatment and whether or not the
treatment plan should be modified.
As part of his master’s program,
Eller’s research focused on a new application of a standard radiation detection
crystal, aluminum oxide. The ultimate
goal was to develop more reliable and

convenient ways of measuring radiation delivered to patients by starting
with understanding the material’s
physics. Attached to patients’ skin while
they receive radiation treatment, the
small crystal detectors can be read
to confirm the appropriate amount
of radiation was given during a treatment session. His work was funded by
Landauer, a global leader in integrated
radiation safety products and services.
In addition to research, the OSU
medical physics graduate degree program includes course work and clinical
rotations at partner facilities such as
Hillcrest and St. John’s medical centers in Tulsa and the ProCure Proton
Therapy Center in Oklahoma City.
“We are very grateful for partners
like Hillcrest and ProCure, who provide our students with a level of handson experience unavailable through
the classroom and the lab,” Polf says.

an industry where you have to know and
understand the fundamentals, but at
the end of the day you get to apply that
information in a way that has a substantial impact on the lives of others.”
The program is the physics department’s response to OSU’s land-grant
mission, says Eric Benton, another
physics professor working with students in the program. “Oklahoma is
a culture of people who want to do
things,” Benton says. “And we are passionate about helping people. That’s
what makes this program so great
and why our students enjoy it.”
Eller has begun a doctoral program
in physics at OSU, an effort requiring
about three more years of study and
research. Once he has finished, he would
like to work in a hospital while maintaining an active research agenda.
According to the American
Association of Physicists in Medicine,

“People don’t normally
think of a physicist
working in a hospital,
but they really have
a very important job
in a hospital setting:
making sure that
the use of radiation
is administered
appropriately.”
– Stephen Eller

PHOTO / KEVIN MCCROSKEY

Impact
Eller says practical, hands-on application and the ability to help people is
really what sold him on medical physics.
“Medical physics is unique in the
sense that you really have to understand
the building blocks of matter, and you
get to apply that to something as practical as treatment of cancer,” he says. “It’s

the U.S. needs at least 200 new medical
physicists per year by 2030 to offset the
growing incidences of cancer and the
retirement of medical physicists from the
baby boomer generation. OSU’s program
is one of about 25 others in the nation.
Kelly Green

Research at Oklahoma State University • www.research.okstate.edu

27

The Energy Renaissance
and U.S. Energy Policy
BY BETTY SIMKINS

T

he shock of the 1970s oil
price increases awakened
the U.S. to the risk of uncertain energy supply and the importance of energy to economic development. Fast forward to 2012 – the
U.S. is now undergoing a shock of
a different type, an energy renaissance, resulting in dramatic increases
in crude oil and natural gas supply.
The latest projections of U.S.
energy needs in the year 2035 by the
Energy Information Administration
indicate that oil, natural gas and coal
should still dominate the energy mix
by providing 77 percent of our energy
needs, as compared to 83 percent in
2010. Renewable energy is expected
to grow from 8 percent in 2010 to 14
percent by 2035. The good news is that
having an increasing supply of crude oil
and natural gas helps give us time to do
the research and development necessary

28

Research at Oklahoma State University • www.research.okstate.edu

to make our next energy transition. It
took the U.S. almost a century to build
the system we have today, transporting
oil and gas efficiently throughout our
country. It can easily take a similar time
period to build new systems that take
advantage of future energy sources.
It is still unclear what the primary
energy sources will be when we shift
from our current mix of fossil fuels.
We must face the hard facts about
energy. These hard facts are what I
refer to as the following five energy
realities, all of which have important implications for energy policy.
Energy Reality One: We are not
running out of fossil fuels.
The U.S. is undergoing an energy
renaissance and is at a historic turning
point involving domestic production
growth for the two fossil fuels: crude
oil and natural gas. Advances in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing

have made it possible to recover oil and
natural gas from shale and tight formations in an economical way that was
previously not possible. These technological advances in drilling and production from unconventional formations are
a paradigm-shifter that is still evolving
and will effect not only the U.S., but
also global markets. To put it simply,
the world is not running out of oil or
natural gas anytime soon, and peak oil is
nowhere in sight. This has also stimulated a rebirth of the U.S. petrochemical industry and will enable the U.S. to
become one of the lowest cost producers
of chemical feedstocks such as ethylene.
Energy Reality Two: Energy
transitions can take close to a
century.
This time period has been referred
to as the “Age of Hydrocarbon Man”
because our civilization is based on the
use of fossil fuels or hydrocarbons. This

age will probably last another 50 to 100
years, if not longer. Energy transitions
do not happen quickly, and with past
transitions, we have always moved to a
more convenient and economic fuel. In
the 1800s, the U.S. shifted from wood to
coal. While the modern petroleum age
began in 1859 when the first oil well was
drilled in Pennsylvania, oil would not
topple king coal as a major energy source
in the U.S. until the late 1940s. This transition took over 80 years. A challenge
for renewables is that, for the first time
in the history of the U.S., we would be
attempting to move to an energy source
that is less useful and less convenient, as
compared to fossil fuels. Will one of the
current renewable energy sources be the
primary fuel of the future? This topic will
be discussed in the next energy reality.
Energy Reality Three: Energy is
all about thermodynamics and
financial economics.
Thermodynamics determines
how much energy we can get from
various sources and is based on the
atomic constitution of matter. We
cannot change this. The optimal energy
source is the one that provides the
highest energy density (i.e., highest
energy stored per volume or weight)
in the most economic way – that is,
the biggest bang for the buck. Liquid
hydrocarbons have very high energy
density whereas renewable sources
have a much lower energy density.
Renewable energy sources such as
wind and solar, while certainly important, will not be able to provide the scale
of energy our country needs. Because
they are intermittent, require large
land footprints and are less economical, they will remain small players
in our energy future. When it comes
to nuclear energy, let’s not throw out
the baby with the bath water. Nuclear
energy has a high energy density, relatively low cost and low carbon impact.
We know from financial economics
that markets should ultimately determine the sources of energy, how much
gets used and where it is used. Government’s role should be to set reasonable
standards for environmental performance, but not to force solutions that
may never be economically competitive.

Energy Reality Four: Energy
security is what we really want.
Energy independence is a misnomer
because the name implies we are isolationists. That is not what we want in
the U.S. We live in increasingly interdependent global markets. Oil security
does not insulate the U.S. from global
oil prices and markets because oil is a
globally traded commodity impacted
by supply, demand and geopolitics. In
2011, the U.S. exported more gasoline,
diesel and other fuels than it imported
for the first time since 1949. Likewise,
the U.S. is expected to be an exporter
of liquefied natural gas within the next
few years. This will help to balance
U.S. trade and create more jobs.
Energy Reality Five: The public
is misinformed about energy and
energy education is a must.
Recent surveys in the U.S. show that
the public is woefully undereducated, and
in some cases energy illiterate, about the
facts and economics of energy. This is
indeed unfortunate. For example, when
asked about what drives energy prices,
the public had it exactly backwards and
did not realize that supply and demand
for oil, natural gas and electricity are the
most important determinants of energy
prices. It is disappointing that politicians,
regardless of their party affiliation, take
advantage of the public’s lack of knowledge and slant information in ways that
reinforce misperceptions. This is due to
the fact that politicians want to pander
to their constituencies and get votes. Our
education system needs to do a better job
of educating the public, not just college
students, on energy policy because
democracy requires an educated, voting
public. A political process that encourages misinformation is undesirable.
No matter what, alternative energy
sources have big shoes to fill. We do not
know what the fuel of the future will be
yet – whether it is a combination of the
alternatives we are currently developing

or a completely new source of energy.
Daniel Yergin forecasts that higher oil
prices will produce “a great bubbling
of innovation” across the energy spectrum. There may be a game changer out
there we have not even envisioned yet.
Overall, our country needs an energy
policy that promotes all of our energy
resources and encourages investment in
advanced technologies. These measures
will help create jobs, strengthen our
economy and enhance energy security.
Through the National Energy Solutions Institute, a collaborative effort at
OSU, our university can be a leader in
these endeavors through energy research
and education. NESI fuses the needs of
private industry in energy production,
distribution and conservation with practical and impactful academic research.
NESI research provides energy solutions for the current and future needs
of the nation as OSU scientists work in
collaboration with private, state and
federal sectors to enable the nation’s
transition to a sustainable energy future.
NESI also emphasizes education
and training in order to supply the state
and nation with the educated workforce
needed to advance energy technology,
policy and economics. In addition, NESI
acts as a focus for outreach activities
to provide topical and relevant information to policy makers and technologists to enable the growth of sustainable
energy enterprises in the modern world.
By being a thought leader, OSU
can help develop energy policy recommendations that will ensure that not
only Oklahoma, but the U.S. as a whole,
makes correct energy policy decisions for a prosperous future. We are
at the cusp of an energy revival. Our
country’s energy future is very bright,
and OSU needs to be a leader in new
technologies to help meet our future
energy needs. We cannot be passive.
We must take a proactive stance.

Betty Simkins is Williams Companies
professor of business and professor of
finance in the Spears School of Business.
She also serves as director of NESI’s
Energy Policy Center.

Research at Oklahoma State University • www.research.okstate.edu

29

The

Possibilities
in Plants
D

Canna lilies
PHOTOS BY KEVIN MCCROSKEY

iscovering her interest for
science at an early age, Dr.
Jeanmarie Verchot found
herself in love with biology. Now at a
milestone in her career, that interest has
not changed.
As an associate professor in the
department of entomology and plant
pathology at Oklahoma State University,
her research has always included tissue
culture in a strategy to control diseases
in agriculture. During her career, she has
looked at everything from carrots and
celery to tobacco, corn and wheat, but
her current efforts focus on one of the
world’s most widespread landscape plant:
canna lilies. She focuses on perfecting
the method of tissue culture that
converts virus-carrying canna lily tissues

Cowboy Technologies helps
propel OSU start-ups to success
As the final step in a commercialization program developed to successfully transition ideas from the lab to the
marketplace, Oklahoma State University’s Cowboy Technologies LLC is
nurturing faculty inventions to commercial success.
Associated Material Processing, one
of Cowboy Technologies’ first startups,
focuses on removing arsenic from water.
AMP’s mission is to make safer drinking
water supplies and rehabilitate wastewater from manufacturing processes
such as computer chip-making.
Cowboy Technologies is also
working with the Creativity, Innovation
and Entrepreneurship Scholars program
through the Spears School of Business, corporate sponsor AAA Oklahoma
and the Office of the Vice President for

30

Research at Oklahoma State University • www.research.okstate.edu

Research and Technology Transfer to
launch an App Center at OSU. The center
will provide a space where students can
transition their app ideas into functioning Web and mobile applications.
As a funding source for these initiatives and others, Cowboy Technologies
has established CT Angels. A member-led
investment fund comprised of OSU alumni
and supporters, it allows member investors to have a first look at technologies
developed at OSU and to invest in those
technologies to help them reach commercialization. CT Angels is seeking new OSU
enthusiasts and friends to invest in the
technologies developed at OSU.
For more information about faculty
projects, the App Center or CT Angels,
visit www.cowboytechllc.com.

to virus-free canna lilies. It’s a method
that could have a substantial impact on
our state, with Oklahoma being one of
the world’s largest producers of canna
lilies. Horticulture is also the fifth-largest
industry in the state.
Canna plants infected with viruses
have streaks or breaks in flower color.
Oklahoma growers, lacking proper diagnostic tools and techniques, are often
unaware of the nature of the viruses.
This problem costs Oklahoma’s floral
industry more than $155 million a year.
Canna lilies are more than ornamental plants. They can be used as
an edible starch and have medicinal
value in treating a number of diseases,
including hepatitis.
Verchot’s work poses so many
possible benefits for growers and the state
that Cowboy Technologies, a for-profit,
limited liability company that aims to
commercialize university inventions, is
working with her to ultimately deliver
certified virus-free canna lily plants to
growers in Oklahoma and beyond.

The Road Toward Success
Verchot graduated with a bachelor’s
degree in genetics from Rutgers University. During her studies, she held internships at Roche Biomedical and at DNA
Plant Technology, where she learned the
value of tissue culture production.
After the internship at Roche
Biomedical, which included pediatric genetic screening, Verchot briefly
considered becoming a genetic counselor. However, she ended up deciding
that field wasn’t a good fit for her.
“I realized that job was not really
pleasant,” she says, adding with a smile: “It
seemed repetitive, and I do not like needles.”

Instead, she looked to the possibilities in plants.
Taking the DNA Plant Technology
internship may have paid little in salary
but it definitely offered “a long-term gain,”
Verchot says. “In those days, internships
in biotechnology were rare … [but] the
experience was really enjoyable.”
“The company is no longer in existence,” says Verchot. “However, the
experience was life-changing because I
learned that I loved plant biology.”
Working side-by-side with scientists at DNA Plant Technology, which
partnered with Campbell Soup, Verchot
helped engineer more flavorful vegetables for soups using tissue culture to
enrich them.
Verchot also worked in industry. She
worked for a small start-up company
in ag biotechnology after she graduated from Rutgers. She then went back
to school for a doctorate at Texas A&M
University and a post-doctoral appointment at Sainsbury Laboratory in the
United Kingdom.
“In all my projects, we have always
used tissue culture for research and for
understanding fundamental processes,”
Verchot says. “Tissue culture is always
the basis for engineering and for understanding biological processes. In my
work, we look at viruses and understanding virus life cycles, as well as
trying to develop strategies to control
viruses. [Tissue culture is] a pervasive
tool as well as a product.”
Bringing that experience with her
to the Noble Research Center at OSU,
Verchot first dived into experiments with
wheat and what improvements could
help Oklahoma’s farmers.
“It has always been a broad project.
Our goal is to meet the needs of the
state,” says Verchot. “I have always been
looking for opportunities to help. The
project with canna lilies came up, and it
seemed like there was a real need and a
real solvable problem. It seemed like the
natural way to go.”
The state agreed. With support
from the Oklahoma Center for the
Advancement of Science and Technology and Horn Canna Farms, the
largest wholesaler of canna lilies in the
nation, Verchot went to work. She soon
proved that virus-free canna lilies could

be produced by micro-propagation of
embryo and shoot tip cultures.
“The value of tissue culture production has been in the back of my mind
through my career, and it has been a major
influence in establishing VF Canna,” says
Verchot about the company she’s established through OSU’s Cowboy Technologies to commercialize her research. “There
are some issues that we felt we could
contribute to the production in helping
growers to support the industry.”

nologies’ chief executive officer. “The
process we’ve established at OSU is
designed to identify and foster projects,
like hers, that are based on sound science,
are economically viable and stand to
benefit not only Oklahoma but the world.”
The partnership with Horn Canna
Farms takes place at the Ridge Road
greenhouse facilities at OSU. Horn
provides planting, harvesting and weed
control; in return, it is anticipated that
Horn will receive an exclusive right to
the commercial bulb market.
Every growing season, VF Canna will
screen plants from Horn for certification
and sale. During the screening process,

The Path to Commercialization
Cowboy Technologies was organized in 2011. The company’s goals
reflect Oklahoma State University’s
land-grant mission
of taking university research from
the campus to the
community.
“The best way
to move forward is
through commercialization, where
we can work more
closely with private
sectors to expand
our services,” says
Verchot. “I had an
opportunity to
present to Cowboy
Jeanmarie Verchot has perfected a method of tissue culture that results
Technologies
in certified virus-free canna lilies.
through the Technology Business
Development Program. They select ideas the plants with no detectable virus will be
identified and certified. Horn is a master
on which they feel they could work with,
distributor, which allows VF Canna’s certiand VF Canna was selected.”
fied virus-free canna bulbs to immediately
Cowboy Technologies identifies
go to the wholesale market. Bulbs will also
technologies of commercial interest and
be planted in the field in order to bulk up
creates an initial business model. The
the supply and sold as individual container
model is presented to Cowboy Techplants to nurseries and direct consumers.
nologies’ advisory committee for review
Wood says VF Canna proves
before its board makes a final funding
the technology commercialization
decision. Once a business model is
ecosystem at OSU is functioning.
approved, Cowboy Technologies acts as
“OSU has worked for a while now to
interim management for the commerestablish and refine a process that not
cialization of the project until an
only supports but also encourages the
industry-specific management team is
commercialization of research of benefit
formed. Cowboy Technologies handles
the initial product and business develop- to our community,” he says. “This project
is one great example of the effectiveness
ment and sources co-funding partners
of that process. It’s a win for all parties
for each stage of development.
involved.”
“We are excited to be working with
David Purdie
Jeanmarie to commercialize her technology,” says Steve Wood, Cowboy Tech-

Research at Oklahoma State University • www.research.okstate.edu

31

Liuling Yan, an associate
professor in wheat molecular
genetics, has been named the
2012 recipient of the James A.
Whatley Award for Meritorious
Service in Agricultural Sciences.

PHOTO / TODD JOHNSON

Yan named 2012 OSU
Whatley Award recipient
Oklahoma State University’s Liuling
Yan has been named the 2012 recipient of
the James A. Whatley Award for Meritorious Service in Agricultural Sciences.
The award was initiated in 1982. It
is presented annually to the top young
scientist in OSU’s Division of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources.
An OSU faculty member since 2006,
Yan holds the Dillon and Lois Hodges
Professorship in the department of plant
and soil sciences.
“Dr. Yan’s research has brought
unprecedented attention to OSU and
conferred a higher reputation on its
Wheat Improvement Team than would
be attainable in his absence,” says Brett
Carver, OSU Regents professor and
holder of the university’s Wheat Genetics
Chair in Agriculture.
Carver says Yan’s scientific discoveries are transforming wheat improvement
programs in the public and private sectors.
“Reproductive differences in winter
wheat, which Dr. Yan has addressed
throughout his OSU career working on
Oklahoma’s commercial plant — hexaploid
wheat — are exponentially more diffi-

32

Research at Oklahoma State University • www.research.okstate.edu

cult to dissect genetically than differences
between spring and winter wheat,” he says.
Yan was the first to locate four genes,
and to develop the corresponding gene
markers for their detection, that regulate reproductive development in winter
wheat. His discoveries have directly
allowed the OSU Wheat Improvement
Team to manipulate the vegetative period
and forage biomass consumed by beef
cattle on wheat pasture.
Mark Hodges, executive director of
Plains Grains Inc., was one of many to
write letters of nomination for Yan.
“Wheat and its associated grazing
component are worth in excess of $1.5
billion annually to the Oklahoma
economy,” Hodges says. “These numbers,
coupled with the support and belief that
Oklahoma producers have in OSU’s
wheat breeding program, showcase the
importance of his contributions to our
agricultural industry.”
Yan also was the first to find a robust
genetic marker system for detecting key
defense genes for protection against two
of the most damaging diseases worldwide in wheat: leaf rust and stripe rust.

“Dr. Yan is rapidly gaining recognition as a national and international
authority in wheat genetics,” says Dave
Porter, head of the OSU department of
plant and soil sciences. “His research
has proven to be especially important
for Oklahoma’s dual-purpose grain
and grazing wheat production system;
one extra week of grazing can generate
an additional $3 to $4 per acre for
producers, which adds up and may mean
the difference between profit and loss.”
Yan’s research contributions are
evidenced by his obtaining more than
$1 million in direct grants since arriving
at OSU in 2006, part of more than $30
million in grants attracted to the division
in which his research has been a contributor, from such agencies as the U.S.
Department of Agriculture, Oklahoma
Wheat Commission and Oklahoma
Center for the Advancement of Science
and Technology, among others.
He has received more than 1,500
citations in ISI Web of Science for publications as the first or corresponding
author and 600 citations for publications
he has co-authored.
Yan currently serves as the major
academic adviser to four graduate
students and as supervisor of three postdoctoral research associates and two
visiting scientists.
Prior to joining OSU, Yan served on
the staffs of the University of California
at Davis, University of Melbourne and
Yangzhou University in China.
He earned his bachelor’s degree in
agronomy and his master’s in wheat physiology from Yangzhou University in 1984
and 1987, respectively. Yan earned his
doctorate in plant molecular genetics from
Australia’s Victoria University in 2000.
Whatley, in whose name the award is
presented, was an animal geneticist who
became director of the Oklahoma Agricultural Experiment Station and then
dean of the division, which is comprised
of the College of Agricultural Sciences
and Natural Resources and two statewide agencies: the Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service and Oklahoma
Agricultural Experiment Station system.
Whatley served OSU for 41 years.
Don Stotts

Oklahoma State University
Office of Vice President for Research and
Technology Transfer
203 Whitehurst
Stillwater, OK 74078-1020

PAID

Stillwater, OK
Permit #191

Images frozen
in time
When art historian Jennifer Borland
looks at art, she asks questions that
might not occur to the rest of us: How
would a viewer from this time period
interpret this? How would people have
applied this to their everyday lives? Given
her field of art history, she’s as concerned
with the piece’s impact on society as
much as she is with the object itself.
Specializing in medieval art,
Borland is currently examining a popular
illustrated health guide known as the
Régime du corps. She is working with
several different illustrated copies of the
guide, including three from the late 13th
or early 14th centuries, which are located
at libraries in France and the United
Kingdom. The text itself survives in
more than 70 copies. “For a single text to
survive in that many copies today means
it was very popular at the time,” she says.
Borland hypothesizes that the guide
was written for and used primarily by
affluent women. It seems the text was
originally written by Aldobrandino of
Siena, the personal physician of Béatrix
of Savoy, the countess of Provence. A
prologue that appears in several copies
of the book states that the guide was
initially written for her to give to her four
daughters, all of them European queens.
As the guide was reproduced and
survived the generations, Borland
believes it was used by the matriarch
of a family to manage the health of the
household — not just her own children,
but potentially servants and their chil-

dren as well. The guide features sections
on childcare, hygiene, drawing blood,
leeching — the act of placing leeches on
the body to remove toxins — breathing
clean air and avoiding illness.
“At this time, much of the medical
profession was becoming more institutionalized and medical study was moving
to universities,” Borland points out. “But
to see this kind of medical compendium
created for use in the domestic realm as
well suggests that such medical knowledge was not limited to the academic
setting or to male physicians.”
It’s a very exciting journey of
discovery for Borland, who has traveled to France and the U.K. to examine
the manuscripts in person, thanks to

funding from the Oklahoma Humanities Council and the OSU College of
Arts and Sciences. She’s already given
several lectures about this project and
has completed an article as well. She
also plans to make the work the subject
of a book, to be entitled Domesticating
Medical Knowledge: Household Health
and the Late Medieval Illustrated
Manuscripts of the Régime du corps.
Borland is an assistant professor of
art at OSU. She obtained her bachelor’s
degree from the University of Pennsylvania and her master’s and doctorate
from Stanford University.
For more information on Borland
and her work, visit art.okstate.edu/
faculty/borland.php.
kelly green